To Remember
by insert-original-name-here
Summary: SPOILERS FOR THE LAST BATTLE Susan a few years after the Last Battle, remembering her family and starting to believe again with the help of her young daughter's dreams.
1. Prologue

**A/N - A/N – I should be finishing stuff I'm writing really, but I had an insatiable urge to write Narnia fanfiction. Also, sorry this A/N will be long but if and when I continue the story they'll be shorter.**

**Basically Susan after the Last Battle with her husband and daughter gradually remembering Narnia. Or that's how it should work out if my writing's good enough. Because I think it's completely possible that she would start believing in Narnia again.**

**I've written the next chapter already because this is a prologue and I'll post it almost straight away probably, but I doubt it will work like that all the way through. **

**Also, I'm posting the start of another Narnia fic about Edmund before LWW and I will probably only focus on one Narnia fic at a time (yeah, I meant to only write one, finish it and then maybe write the other but it didn't work) but I haven't decided which yet so if you do read them both and have a preference and want to tell me 'twould be good. I might always end up writing them at the same time but I don't plan to at the moment.**

**Bookverse, but I suppose there could be some influence from the films because I've seen them recently.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia, I never have owned it and I'm not going to start owning it midway through the story. Or ever.**

A great monarch sat silent in a country that almost glistened with life and virtue. The river on which he fixed his eyes chattered with excitement as it flowed down, ever down past the regal trees and lively creatures. Indeed, the monarch himself seemed the only inhabitant lost in thoughtful worries, separated from the rest of that world by his doubts.

Presently, another King, perhaps greater than the first, approached, throwing himself down in a show of exuberance under the same tree, glancing at the same river, having already made acquaintance with the shallow section, so that he was caked in mud form the thighs down, wet through and thoroughly enjoying himself. "Come on, Ed," the High King implored, stray spots of mud flicking from his hair onto his brother, to remain there, ignored "Lucy and I are down there with the others. Why won't you come and join us?"

For a long time, it seemed the first King wasn't going to answer at all, but as his brother shifted, wondering whether to leave, the words escaped "Why am I here at all, Peter? What am I doing here?"

_Guilt, _the realisation dawned "You're a _Narnian_," the reply was accompanied by a gentle, damp punch to his shoulder "Of course you're here,"

His companion had started speaking again almost before the High King had finished "But why am I here – why do I _deserve_ to be here – when she doesn't?"

A silence ensued, during with the older King – Peter – picked idly at the grass and the younger – Edmund – reasserted his fascination with the river. They both understood perfectly well which _she_ they were talking about.

"Susan's not here... because – because she stopped believing in Narnia. How was she supposed to come here if she didn't believe it existed?"

"Isn't what I've done worse than that?" The question would rarely leave him, and it had been all he could do not to trouble his siblings about it until now. "I _betrayed_ you, Peter. I betrayed Narnia. I could have – could have doomed the whole country, the people. I nearly _killed_ you. Susan just – forgot. So tell me what I'm doing here when she's not. Tell me why what she did was so much worse than what I did."

The grass in Peter's hands was shredding faster, and Edmund thought he wouldn't have an answer. "You... you repented Edmund. You're a better person now and – you're not doing it anymore..."

"So..." Edmund knew what his brother meant, couldn't accept it as an excuse for what he'd done. "I suppose it was just a phase, was it? Maybe Susan was just... going through a phase. A perfectly harmless one and maybe... I don't know. I'm sorry, Peter, I didn't want to... I shouldn't be just talking about this, it's – selfish..."

"No, go on,"

He almost didn't, but he heard a voice replying and it sounded like his own "So it's OK for me because I grew out of it? Because I was given more time. Maybe she could have grown out of it, but... she's not here,"

"No," both brothers looked around in surprise to see another monarch sitting beside them, in a better state than Peter, though not by much; neither of them had heard her approach.

"Lu!"

The Queen nodded distractedly, before continuing "No, Susan's not here. Because she's still alive. It wasn't our world – our _old_ world, I mean – that was destroyed, was it? We died in our world on the train, but Susan wasn't on the train." Her hand brushed gently against Edmund's knee "Susan _will _remember. Aslan will help her, and when she does, and once she's – once she's dead, we'll be here waiting for her. I know she'll come."

"You know it?" he needed reassurance.

"Well, I believe it," the words were simple, but with them, the man remembered that he, too needed to believe, have faith and know that his sister wasn't being punished for a lesser crime than he had committed. He would believe and have faith and when their family was whole again he would be free and –

Suddenly, the younger King was blushing, abashed that he hadn't considered what his little sister had known unquestionably, and the worry was lodging back in his mind, because Susan wasn't there _yet_ and she had to remember. She had to, because if not, how would his being there, his section of perfection, his – playing with Lucy and Peter, how would that be just?

**:) Reviews would be awesome.**


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N - The next chapter. Which has Susan in it :)**

**Disclaimer - applies from the first chapter to every chapter. Or do you have to put one in every chapter?**

The dusty morning sunlight of a London day fell softly through an upstairs window into a neat town house, gracing the pretty yet worn face of a young woman, gently waking her. Her name was Susan Merritt, formerly Pevensie and her face was worn because the course of her life had had her bearing more than the norm for her tender years.

_Her years were perhaps not quite as tender as they seemed either, though she wouldn't have known it any more than anybody else would._

The woman, Susan, had six years ago almost to the day lost her entire family – everyone she loved – to a devastating train crash. Since then she had visited their graves, daily whenever she could, but she knew that wouldn't bring them back. Nothing would bring them back.

_She may or may not have borne other hardships, other adventures, generally perceived as impossible for years so tender – but had anyone asked her she would have told them that that was absurd._

In fact, said family had asked Susan to be on that train, to travel with them in their fairytale feats of imagination; she had naturally declined, imagination being a luxury reserved mainly for children and the sophisticated flow of adult life in London leaving no break for such things. It was afterwards that she sometimes wished she hadn't, that she had allowed the absurdity in. At least then, she had reasoned, she would be with her family, with their unfailing love, stoic protection, with their odd quirks and magical lands. Nothing would bring them back, but she could have gone with them to meet... whatever lies beyond death. Susan would remind herself now that she had her own family to love, to look after. Not to replace her old family, but something different: her own beautiful daughter. But that didn't stop her face from being worn in the mornings, with grief and regret and hurt.

Anna was getting older now, starting to notice the odd reminders scattered through their house, queer little gifts or additions from her brothers and sister that they had given her before – before the train crash. It wouldn't be long until she started seeing her mother's mannerisms too, the worn face in the morning, the disappearance to the cemetery and all the rest. It wouldn't be long until Susan would have to truly explain to her about her Uncles Peter and Edmund and her Aunt Lucy.

_They had often looked almost sombre as they had given her the gifts, had told her they wanted her to remember, but she hadn't a clue what they had meant._

Her two favourites were hanging above the bed, close enough to reach out and touch with her fingers. When she looked at them now her heart would explode with sorrow, yes, but mostly with love for the lost, though years ago, when she had been able to take their love for granted, they had stayed hidden in her cupboards most of the year, coming out only when they visited, so they could see she cared.

The first was a bow. Not a hair bow – which, when she had been given it, she probably would have preferred – but a slender, wooden bow for firing arrows from. There was a quiver too, full of arrows with hard wooden tips and together they rested on the mantle above her headboard.

When she had first seen the bow, when Lucy had dashed into her room, eyes bright and with Edmund waiting in the doorway, Susan had been horror-struck. Yes, she had practiced archery at school, and had been rather good at it, she remembered, but that didn't mean a young woman needed anything to do with a bow.

Lucy, it turned out, had had the idea that they could practice shooting it together, and had commissioned Edmund's enthusiastic help in crafting it. It would, she had claimed in excitement, be 'just like old times', at which point the older sister had sighed, wondering what there was about school that merited its being recreated by use of a bow and arrows. And, she had reflected then, a poorly constructed bow. Lucy and Edmund still being kids, or nearly kids, it was probably OK for them to go around cutting crude bows and pretending they were great Knights or Kings or whatever it was, but not Susan, as she had firmly told them.

She could still see Lucy's crestfallen face, the hope seeping from it, and Edmund's retreating back, shoulders sagging as he glanced over them, deep-set worry clouding his features. They would haunt her, those expressions, and those overreactions that she would never understand, so that she wished she had just gone out and played at their silly archery game with them.

When Susan looked at the bow now, she would wonder why she had ever thought the craftsmanship was poor. For a couple of kids, Lucy and Edmund's bow-making skills were extraordinary. Not anything to the kind of pictures she'd seen before, but they had never been by any means professional, and hadn't had all of the equipment they needed. They hadn't even had Peter helping them, who was the oldest and would probably have known more of that kind of thing than they did, for he – very understandably – had been otherwise occupied.

Peter had still managed to find time to add to the collection of quirks in her home though. Indeed, hanging above the bow on the wall was an exquisite painting of a lion, his mane blowing gaily in a warm wind. His face though – Susan had never been sure about his face. It certainly wasn't gay and free like the mane, but something else. She had never been able to pinpoint the exact expression, but she had always said something between sympathetic and disapproving. He was looking sad now, almost like her, she thought.

That lion had come from Peter. He hadn't actually painted it himself, of course, not having the time and probably lacking the artistic skill too. Suddenly, her milk-white hand was brushing the corner of the canvas, shocked that she couldn't tell for sure what her brother's skill was... had been. No, Peter had seen it at a small art display – not the fashionable kind that she was partial to – and had, apparently, _known_ that he should buy it for her.

The next day she had found him giving it to her, and had wondered vaguely why none of her siblings could have her own taste in art. That picture had been doomed to the cupboards until the night she had heard the news, when she had flung her heart open and seen the lion's eyes fixed on her in sorrow.

"Susan?" Presently, a voice appeared in the doorway, and the woman glanced up, very conscious of the tears threatening to flow from her tired eyes, to meet eyes with the man to whom she had pledged eternal love, but who understood that there would always be others held in that same position in her heart, that her family merited love unfailing and undying, whether they themselves lived or died.

He husband's name was Dylan, the name she shared with him Merritt, and she had met him first at the parties. Oh! what parties they had been, the kind she had loved, filled with wonderful new clothes and beautiful make-up. She knew now, though, that those parties, for all their grandeur, would never replace the people she had loved... still did love.

Even most the people she had met there, even the courteous men and exquisite women, her great friends, fell into blurred memories when their sympathies stopped after the superficial social requirements. Dylan had been one of many people then, a grand man whom she had liked for his strong jaw, his bright eyes and yellow hair, just as before she had liked William for his dark, styled hair, or Lucas for the red glints that speckled his.

Dylan, though, had been the first to comfort her and the last to leave; he had stayed with her through dark nights and days without hope until he had _become_ her hope. Not having known her siblings, he still managed to heal her wounds somewhat, so that she knew, or at least hoped that one day she would be with them again. When the young Mr Merritt had asked the once again whole – or nearly whole – woman to be his bride, it had been for his loyalty and devotion, his kindness and his strength that she had agreed, not for his jaw, or his eyes, or even the shining yellow of his hair.

"Good morning," she murmured softly, meeting his eyes with her own tears.

And from behind him came their daughter, a beautiful thing, with wide, bright eyes and flowing hair, darker than her father's, jumping onto her parents' bed to embrace her mother, the tears expelled for now.

It seemed many minutes until the girl pulled herself away from the embrace to lie back against her mother's chest while Susan played idly with her daughter's hair, and many more until she spoke again, in her high, piping voice "I dreamed I saw a lion, Mother,"

**Reviews would be much appreciated :)**


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